In today's high-tech, fast-paced, hyper-connected world, people are spending more and more time on the internet to complete more of their daily activities such as online banking and shopping. The convenience afforded by the access and availability of the online world, however, is not without drawbacks. This increased access has brought with it an unparalleled growth in online fraudulent activity.
Reports about identity takeover, filled with phrases like Trojan, Man in the Middle, Man in the Browser, and Phishing, are increasingly in the news. These emerging threats have triggered a growing awareness by service providers and customers alike. These threats are serious and must be addressed.
Service providers, such as financial institutions, trying to encourage customer activity, while at the same time minimizing losses from financial fraud, are looking for ways to deal with these threats. One possible way is to use a risk-based authentication system with an associated risk engine to assign risk scores to transactions. The transactions with a low risk score can be processed. Those transactions with a high risk score can be rejected or else a further step up challenge can be issued. For example, the risk-based authentication system can be configured to challenge a user to confirm their identity in order to allow a transaction to proceed.
However, there are a number of problems associated with the issuance of a challenge to a user. Firstly, the issuance of a challenge can be expensive. For example, it will be understood that an out-of-band call can have an up-front cost as well as the cost of a person taking the time to make the call. Additionally, the issuance of a challenge can be a source of frustration to the user which can have an adverse effect on the business of a service provider. Moreover, the usefulness of a challenge can erode over a period of time as the challenge is issued more and more.
The present invention is directed towards addressing at least some of the above problems associated with user authentication challenges.